Network now...NEWS
Sony Defends Blu-ray
Back in February Janco Partners’ analyst Mike Hickey made the rather wild assertion that Sony was planning to drop the Blu-ray drive from the PS3 in order to provide a cheaper model.
As much as a logistical nightmare such a move would provide, in the wake of Blu-ray winning the format war, Sony declined to comment on market speculation.
Now, however, Sony’s marketing manager Kim Nguyen has broken the firm’s silence and confirmed that the idea is absurd. Speaking to Business Insider, Nguyen said that removing Blu-ray “would pretty much destroy the PS3's backbone, our games were built on Blu-ray.”
“Blu-ray will always be part of PS3," he concluded.
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Seeing as Glenn's brought this back onto the side bar with his informative and useful observations, I may as well comment:
In the wake of the PSP Go being released (which hadn't been announced when this article originally popped up), do we think that there's a possibility of sony releasing a download only PS3 at some point, or is that simply too far-fetched for this gen? Personally, I thought the download only handheld seemed far-fetched but it's here, and we all secretly know that the industry will be download only within 15 years, so; do we think any of the "big three" will try a download only revision of their current consoles?
Hello donkey breath!
I would be happy with a download only/Hardisk PS3 if the price was right of course. PSN games have been pretty good to me. I've rented a few Blu-rays but no way am I replacing my DVD collection, which is still growing.
I really don't understand why EDGE is following this thinly-veiled rumour. Why, or f*ck that, HOW would Sony ditch Bluray?!
Janco clearly have no clue. If this was a marketing ploy for them, well, at least they got me to mention their name.
I think Janco was just working a little stock manipulation to make some quick cash. Hopefully the new, all caring SEC will give them a little investigation.
Brian
www.brianwoods.com
Although initially blu-ray was a disaster for Sony, im actually pleased that they have stood by their conviction and will continue to support their desiciion.
Having said that, we all know that too much pride can kill a man, or in this case a console.
Unbelievable, Mike Hickey who's this noob? : Sony would be stupid to kick Blue Ray to the curb.. All they need do is wait for the next gen of blue ray players which will see seek times and transfer rates raise considerably and update the PS3 accordingly. Sony aren't about to start going backwards as much as much as the Xbox fraternity would like to see them fail.
I'm going with the Sony boys on this one... "Blu-ray will always be part of PS3"
Sony wouldn't drop the only reason to own a PS3. Why would their customers stay with a overly expensive machine without better graphics capability than its nearest competitor, or no down load content for Fallout 3, or cross game chat if it doesn't even have BLUE RAY? duRH!!!
Janco Partners are obviously partners with you-know-who.
WILL AND ALWAYS WILL BE PART OF PS3!
Its just a fanxbots wish full thinking....
Monkey,
You don't have to get hostile and include some kind of xbots comment. I could care less if it has a bluray player or not. Theoretically it could work as BluRay is just a storage medium. They could release a new PS3 without it and all future games from then on (after a fair amount of warning) would have to be DVD-9 only. Is it possible? Sure. Is it ever going to happen? Hell no. It is ridiculous to even consider that, but I don't think "xbots" have anything to do with this particular rumor.
Yo if u cant read the name right - then even dont reply. Who the heck asked you? The two of you can hold hands and piss on SONY all you want... It just anoying to read in every SONY TITLE - "well the 360 does this better" Stop justifing your product and go play it, cause you sure have enough time to crap on here everyday.
Well i cant hold hands with any body whilst pissin', my Johnson soo big i need both my hands to handle it accuratly. And for the record Just how is the ps3 supossed to be able to woo the public with graphics that are gonna get better if its only got 256 mb of ram to handle graphics when the 360 has the ability to partition its 512mb ram any way the developer decides in favour of graphics vs audio. I think Killzone 2 has hit ps3's limit in regards to what can be acheived with a mere 256mb. Just some thing for yall to think about! We 360 guys all got bigger johnsons than yall ps3 tidlers and you wanna know how we xbots know this? yall girls tell us! ;)
Lol, I can read your name right, but I change people's name for fun (I do it with a bunch of people it's a habit of mine, it stems from xbox live when people have names that kinda read one way at a glance I just kinda stick with that initial interpretation). I meant no offense by it, you have my apologies.
@gwsmokey
I don't ever just "piss" on Sony and I have for the most part backed off on my criticism of Sony over the last few months (some people in these threads are sensitive to any PS3 criticism). If you want to categorize me with Kim then you obviously don't read my posts. I may defend the 360 and be critical of Sony from time to time, but by no means does that make me another Kim. You obviously got frustrated because I called you out and called you monkey. Step back, take a breather, and think that maybe you could have gone without throwing the term xbots around without any justification or relevance.
edit: smokey (is that ok?)
If you read two of my posts on this very thread (they were prior to my reply to you) you will see that in one instance I defended the PS3 while replying to Kim's continuing bashing of MGS4's load times and was critical of MS not including an HDD with every 360 like they did with the Xbox 1. What do I have to do on these forums to be viewed as just another gamer instead of some blatant xbot fanboy? Yeah I like the 360, but that doesn't mean I don't try to be objective even when discussing the 360 and its faults (or praising Sony when warranted).
edit 2: Oh, and by the way, I would love to be gaming instead of on this site, but I'm at work most of the time I post on this site and I can't play my 360 at work.
Hey... fair enough! Anyhow MGS4 was huge! It required 5GB of data on each. After that loading was minimal Look at KZ2, play Uncharted, and then few other games. Its all about how the code is programmed to the Cell architecture. IMO Kojima is a impressive artist, and the game delivered on presentation and graphics @ 1080p.
Sounds good...
I personally have never played MGS4 or any other PS3 game but I have seen Uncharted running and that game left me with no doubt the PS3 is a more than capable machine. I also have no idea about the load times (that's why I asked if anyone personally had experienced SFIV's PS3 load times) but it just seems that Kim is on a mission to point out the same things about the PS3 over and over, and even a 360 fan like myself is embarrassed for him. It gives us 360 gamers a bad name and we could all benefit from his departure...EDGE you listening? ^^
The longer load times have to do with the Blu Drive's slower access speeds (it's natural for a new optical disc based storage medium to not be super fast as far as the drive speeds, DVD-rom drives started the same way), so what many Developers do is require an initial install, then sometimes between levels there's loading to put assets onto the HDD using some scratch space. With the access speeds of the 360 DVD, initial installs are not required, but instead you have the issue of hearing the jet engine noise of the DVD drive spinning as data is being accessed.
In my experience I've only been bothered by PS3 load times once: when I sat down to play MGS4 for the first time, I had to go through the initial install, then the first level loading/install. It took about 45 minutes total, but was amplified by my desire to play. Other than that, I've had zero beef with load times, they might be a bit longer, but it really has no consequence on my overall experience.
Regardless of Blu Ray's flaws, Sony aren't going to ditch it after beating HD DVD.
Even if its only mildly profitable its better than scrapping it, a frankly ludicrous suggestion.
Seriously, the analyst who said that Sony would make a PS3 without Blu-Ray ([name drop]Mike Hickey [/name drop]) is the biggest idiot on the planet.
MrCarltio:
You said you wanted to know when the PS3 has terrible load times.
I have completely lost count of the number of PS3 games I have played with long load times, but let me just focus on some of the more high profile ones, and some recent games.
As you know the PS3 transfers data at a rate of only 9MB per second, compared to 16MB per second for Xbox 360. A great example of how this causes longer loading times in the PS3 is Street Fighter 4. The loading times when the Xbox 360 is reading from the disc are about 10 seconds. The loading times when the Playstation 3 is reading from the disc are about 30 seconds, which is far too long.
Metal Gear Solid 4 is another PS3 game that has terrible loading times. In fact, Konami forced people who reviewed MGS4 to sign a contract saying that the looooong loading "installs" could not be allowed to penalize the review score of the game. Otherwise, Konami was not willing to give an early copy of the game to reviewers for free. The long loading times of MGS4 last randomly from 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute...It is terrible!
Shows how much you know about technology. The 2x BD drive has Data Transfer Rate close to the 16X DVD drive in X360... Then again, why are you always in here slamming the PS3? Huh? Its not news that ur excited over so whats ur point then?
Before chastising others about how much they know about technology, you should make sure you know what you're talking about too, gwsmokey.
PS3 uses a 2x BD drive which is 9MB/second. The Xbox 360 uses a 12x DVD, which gives it 16MB/second - that's not close at all from a game developer standpoint. While it's true that developers can compensate somewhat for that slower speed by placing redundant files throughout the disc that kind of defeats the purpose of having all that extra space in the first place.
And that is a really simplistic understanding of how different drive speeds work! Well done!
I believe its the access times not the transfer rate that is the issue with BR vs DVD.
Either way PS3 is on average way slower to load in game situations.
Do you not realise that there are actaully people here that have both systems?
Andy are you talkin to me? I'd be shocked if Mr. Noraz had a PS3. He's far worse than me when it comes to 360 defending/PS3 bashing.
God no, not aimed at you at all Nick, I would never tar you with the same brush as Kim, the comment was aimed at him. :)
Lol, ok, that's what I was thinking, too. But I've been more vocal as of late so I thought possibly it was aimed at me.
Kim's been singing that same MGS4 load time song since it came out. That and the disclosure agreement reviewers had to sign if they wanted an early review copy (something that has since been somewhat sorted out by those who signed it). It wasn't quite as limiting as the spin Kim puts on it. It was more about releasing story elements than the load times (which most comments I read by reviewers after the fact said they wouldn't have lowered their score for the install sections). The only knock I saw in reviews that seemed pretty unanimous was the long cut scenes, not the load times and even then they didn't gripe about the cut scenes too much.
Oops, didn't mean to go off on a tangent.
I know, I actually just find his comments amusing now, and the fact that there is now a tradition formed with the picard face palm etc. Gives me something to brighten the morning at work.
If you're an MGS fan, the cut-scenes were some of the best bits, I mean, the gameplay was awesome, but some of the cut-scenes really were "Hair standing up on your arms" moments. But then I have been a fan of MGS since the first one! :)
Kim,
When did you get a PS3 you sly dog? You're still singing the same MGS4 load-times song? As far as your other post, yeah...Sony made all those claims. Most of them hilarious. I think they even boasted having 4 usb and 4-5 ethernet cables (and even having an ethernet OUT instead of just ins. Sony, Sony, Sony...
I do think though that the PS2 Toy Story comment is up for debate whether or not it was ever said, I think some believe that was a myth and no one actually ever said that at Sony.
Ha that would be Sony claiming Ps2 to be perfectly capable of in game graphics on a scale of Disny/Pixar's Toy story. Now, being a fan of the ps1, my mouth slaviated and i drooled like the dog in sight of a bitch, in total anticipation of the release of the PS2. But it was aparently the first of many,many over bloated claims of their systems technical performance. Damn, is it me...or was it like the third or fourth year into the ps2 life that we began to see visuals better than Dreamcasts? Yal will never learn will ya? You heard the saying..."Theres no such thing has bad publicity" Well i can tell you this, Sony subscribes to this theory, By coming out with totally over cooked claims of their systems performance, people will talk and get caught up in the Bull Sh!t and start looking forward to the said machine....sad to say, but it would seem so far as Sony's customers are concerned, there is no amount of falsehoods they are not prepaired to take, just so they can dream of a time when their games will look like the original claims of Sony. Its tragic really. Even Shadow of the colosess (soz 4 the mispeling) which was amazing by the ps2 own standard was concerned,was no match for the very first game the gamecube was released with! (Luigis mansion) Yet the dumb public kept hearing "dont under estimate the power of playstation" Or "The emoition engine is not yet being fully utilised" when it was painfuly aparent it was technicaly outclassed by the cube and then xbox. But its the original claims of sony that ring in the ears of potential console customers from years before "yea its not looking as good has gamcube, but sony say it can do toy story in real time! cuz of this crap, we had a underpowerd piece of crap leading the market, and to think sega went under because folk would rather hold out for a console that ended up with the most shovel ware that any system before or since as had the misfurtune to be held down with, i mean, i hated sega (i am a die hard nintendo fan and proud) yet i would have to be fool number 1, to not admit that Dreamcast had the very finest games libary of any console (most amount of 90 or above rated games with the least amount of shovel ware) Nintendo lost a worthy advisary in Sega and got a pretender that cant back up its boasts and dishes out useless dog sh!t. I wish Sony would make good on their claims...i dont enjoy trash talking easy targets, this feals almost like bullying.
Sigh...someone ban this idiot.
Reason: Lack of grammar!
Wow.
Ha that would be Sony claiming Ps2 to be perfectly capable of in game graphics on a scale of Disny/Pixar's Toy story. Now, being a fan of the ps1, my mouth slaviated and i drooled like the dog in sight of a bitch in heat in total anticipation of the release of the PS2. But it was aparently the first of many,many over bloated claims of their systems technical performance. Damn, is it me...or was it like the third or fourth year into the ps2 life that we began to see visuals better than Dreamcasts? Yal will never learn will ya? You heard the saying..."Theres no such thing has bad publicity" Well i can tell you this, Sony subscribes to this theory, By coming out with totally over cooked claims of their systems performance, people will talk and get caught up in the Bull Sh!t and start looking forward to the said machine....sad to say, but it would seem so far as Sony's customers are concerned, there is no amount of falsehoods they are not prepaired to take, just so they can dream of a time when their games will look like the original claims of Sony. Its tragic really. Even Shadow of the colosess (soz 4 the mispeling) which was amazing by the ps2 own standard was concerned,was no match for the very first game the gamecube was released with! (Luigis mansion) Yet the dumb public kept hearing "dont under estimate the power of playstation" Or "The emoition engine is not yet being fully utilised" when it was painfuly aparent it was technicaly outclassed by the cube and then xbox. But its the original claims of sony that ring in the ears of potential console customers from years before "yea its not looking as good has gamcube, but sony say it can do toy story in real time! cuz of this crap, we had a underpowerd piece of crap leading the market, and to think sega went under because folk would rather hold out for a console that ended up with the most shovel ware that any system before or since as had the misfurtune to be held down with, i mean, i hated sega (i am a die hard nintendo fan and proud) yet i would have to be fool number 1, to not admit that Dreamcast had the very finest games libary of any console (most amount of 90 or above rated games with the least amount of shovel ware) Nintendo lost a worthy advisary in Sega and got a pretender that cant back up its boasts and dishes out useless dog sh!t. I wish Sony would make good on their claims...i dont enjoy trash talking easy targets, this feals almost like bullying.
Sigh...
Load times on PS3 for the most part aren't bad. I've had one for several months now and I really have no complaints. Game installs, often are shorter than what it would take to do on a PC, require no CD switching, and no monitoring. If the wait time for a game to install bugs you, go stretch your legs for a few minutes.
The only thing that really has ever gotten to me in terms of annoyance and load times was the Grand Theft Auto IV. It does take several minutes to load and replays the same four pictures over and over again. Even then its not that terrible especially when you think of the large city GTA IV has to load. This can be solved so easily too by either watching tv for a minute or two or keeping yourself busy for two to three minutes.
I honestly can't see them dropping the blu ray as it would be a fatal blow to their system that finally is beginning to put out some nice and promising games.
FamousRob is 100% correct.
Sony has a reputation for telling lies. This manager from Sony cannot be believe any more than the people from Sony who said things like:
* PS3 will launch in spring of 2006
* PS3 will launch simultaneously worldwide
* PS3 will have 2 HDMI outputs
* PS3 will have mandatory 1080p resolution output (another big lie)
* PS3 will have games running at 120 frames per second (another huge lie, considiner many PS3 games struggle to run at 30 frames per second).
* PS2 has an Emotion Engine CPU that can produce playable graphics similar to the Disney move Toy Story.
......Obviously Sony tells BIG LIES!!!
The word on the street from many game analysts is that Sony is going to completely do away with the Blu-ray format and instead include a big hard drive with the system. Games will be sold as downloads.
Blu-ray really is a disappointing failure for a format. DVD was enjoying FAR more success at a similar stage in its lifecycle. DVD still controls 97% of the market. Blu-ray shares the remaining 3% of the market with other formats such as VHS, Laserdisc, HD-DVD, CD-ROM, and others.
The very limited selection of Blu-ray movies, and the high prices of Blu-ray movies was too much for the format to overcome. Plus, the increased competition from DVD players that upconvert to 1080p was incredible. So many DVD movies look virtually identical to the Blu-ray movies when upconverted to high-definition. And many DVD movies actually look better, since the movies are not remastered in HD for the Blu-ray release. Therefore, the Blu-ray versions have more video-noise that looks like background statis, especially during night scenes.
Sony knows that 1080p is a format that won't be around for long. HDMI 1.3 already supports 1440p. Plus, the Blu-ray discs never bothered to support features like 36-bit or 48-bit x.v. Deep Color. For $35 every Blu-ray disc should have DTS HD Master Audio and 48-bit Deep Color, but they don't.
Releasing a PS3 without Blu-ray might be the right thing to do.
@On March 13th athlete_gamer
"Blu-ray really is a disappointing failure for a format. DVD was enjoying FAR more success at a similar stage in its lifecycle. DVD still controls 97% of the market. Blu-ray shares the remaining 3% of the market with other formats such as VHS, Laserdisc, HD-DVD, CD-ROM, and others."
Your thought is unpolished.
First, take into consideration the time taken by the time more DVDs than VHS sold. Did it change to DVD from VHS in the instant? Is the spread of Blu-ray how much late as compared with it?
People who regret the defeat of "HD DVD" do the in general same reaction.
Also you can't forget the old "360's hardware fail rates are within industry standard."
bum
Are you STILL here talking out of your a**e and then not responding directly to anyone Kim. One day, maybe you'll actually talk, or give up. MAYBE. :)
Where's Mr Picard when you need him? Arrrrrrrrroooooooon....??
I was wondering the same thing. I know I put i my palm to my forehead after the latest "Kimism", but it's just not the same without the good captain doing it.
Yeah, it's not quite the same is it. I def think it's Arron's job to do the picard face palm to the Kim comments, it's become an edge tradition now. :)
Good man Arron, keep up the good work.
Uh I haven't had any terrible load times on my PS3. When someone does please let me know.
That's probably because of your madatory installs...
Also, I have heard 30 secs for SFIV versus 10 on 360 as well as loads on other games
Wow. Any PS3 owners out there that could vouch for that? I wonder when devs are going to start developing games for the 360 with optional full-game installs in mind. And why aren't developers using the PS3's HDD to cache? Once each character/map/music track gets loaded once the PS3's hard drive could just cache that in every time a match starts up. The HDD transfer speeds will be much faster than DVD-9/BluRay. Halo 1 and 2 used this same concept, that's why they had zero load times when starting up a multiplayer or campaign match. Halo 3 unfortunately doesn't have the same benefit of a guaranteed HDD like Halo 1 & 2 did on the xbox one (kinda backwards if you ask me) so Halo 3 has some lame load times in multiplayer online.
I have nearly 10Gig of my PS3 HD used up with mandatory game installs (to be fair, I have quite a few PS3 games). I don't mind optional installs (like UTIII offers), but large mandatory installs are a pet peeve of mine. Yes, they absolutely speed up load times so that they are comparable to installing a 360 game onto it's HD (option became available after NXE). Many developers have admitted that they had to go with mandatory installs on PS3 because the Blu-ray drive on PS3 was simply too slow for game applications.
While it is true that DVD-9's have portions of the disc that actually have slower data transfer rates than a Blu-Ray disc (which has a consistent read rate throughout the disc), developers learned long ago to place the files you need quick access to on the "faster" parts of the DVD and other stuff on the "slower" parts of the DVD, thus making it the better format from a game development perspective. Of course, doing away with hard media altogether and putting everything on the HD is the fastest possible solution.
Install the game and the load times are drastically cut to a 2-3 second load times.
Everything ive read says installation on ps3 cuts times to those of 360 on disc.
Its not to say that PS3 isnt capable of equally quick load times; there might be ways round it... but developers arent (from the reports I read) using it.